Certain vehicle operators ("restricted operators" or "ROs") have their vehicle use privileges restricted from time to time. These vehicle use restrictions may arise because of one or more recent convictions of the operator for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, because of recent physical, mental or emotional impairment or the advanced age of the operator, or because of other similar reasons. Other restrictions may be applied to any driver of a vehicle that transports hazardous materials or that school children or groups of persons with special health or safety problems. Under appropriate circumstances, a court or other regulatory agency will often allow the restricted operator to use his/her vehicle only for transportation between the driver's residence and the driver's place of work, physician/pharmacy office or similar destination, and only in restricted time intervals. One problem here is how to monitor the restricted operator's use of the vehicle to confirm that the vehicle is being used only within a permitted corridor and/or only within a permitted time interval, when used by that person.
In other applications, access to a vehicle may be restricted to a limited set of vehicle operators. Use of a personalized and unspoofable method of providing access, which goes beyond mere possession of an ignition key, may be desirable. For example, limiting access to a specified vehicle in a fleet of vehicles may be desired, such as access to a particular rental vehicle by an identified person who has rented that vehicle.
Several workers have disclosed methods for tracking the location of a person as that person moves around within a confinement region. One solution of the site confinee tracking problem contemplated by some of these previous workers is to bind a GPS antenna/receiver and a cellular or other signal transmitter to the site confinee's body (1) to confine the site confinee to the confinement site during normal times by GPS-assisted location monitoring, and (2) to reprogram the boundary of the confinement site (stored in memory) to include the designated site and a narrow corridor or path between the confinement site and the designated site, within a selected time interval, to allow the site confinee to move to the designated site and back to the confinement site, again using GPS signals to monitor the confinee's present location.
This approach, although straightforward, does not by itself provide tracking of vehicle location (only) during the times the restricted operator uses the vehicle and does not prevent the restricted operator from spoofing the system to cause the system to conclude that the vehicle is within a permitted corridor, when in fact the vehicle is elsewhere. Further, it may be desired to restrict use of a vehicle to a selected region, whether or not the vehicle is operated by an RO.
Receipt and analysis of a biometric sample supplied by a person to verify the asserted identity of that person is disclosed in several U.S. Patents. These patents usually contemplate determination of that person's identity once and at a fixed place of receipt of the sample.
What is needed is an integrated location determination system and control system with anti-spoofing capability, for automatically distinguishing between a restricted operator, seated behind the driver's wheel of a vehicle, and some other driver, for determining the present vehicle location, and for comparing the present vehicle location with a permitted vehicle travel corridor and with a permitted time interval for vehicle travel. Preferably, the permitted time interval(s) and permitted vehicle corridor(s) should be flexible and should be capable of being changed by an authorized monitoring agency or person. Preferably, the monitoring system should include anti-spoofing mechanisms that make it difficult, if not impossible, for the restricted operator to operate a designated vehicle, or any vehicle, without activating a vehicle location reporting unit that is carried by the vehicle. In another mode of operation, the system should preferably allow operation of the vehicle to be restricted to a selected region, irrespective of who operates the vehicle.